(5)Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain vs (12)Perfect Dark 2015
Results Round One '' ''Sunday, November 15, 2015 Ulti's Analysis The biggest thing we heard during Undertale's run is that the game was too new to win a contest called "Best Game Ever". While this is an opinion people are allowed to have (and one I thoroughly disagree with, since you don't need an arbitrary shelf life to be good), where was the outcry against Metal Gear Solid 5 and Witcher 3 making the bracket? What about Life is Strange, Super Mario Maker, Bloodborne, Splatoon, or any other game from 2015 that might have gotten in? Where's the outcry about those games? Oh, right, almost all of them were either fodder or too weak to matter, so complaining about those doesn't fit the arbitrary agenda. David Sirlin wrote a fantastic series of articles called Playing to Win, that I suggest everyone take an afternoon to read: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ In the series, Sirlin calls those who don't play to win scrubs, and more or less said that tournament play is the only gameplay that truly matters. Scrubs like to make up hidden rules in their own mind to justify their own way of doing anything competitive. This caused a lot of panties to get twisted when he first said it, and it still causes arguments today. All the people who defended Brawl's gameplay over Melee's because "lol tournament players", for instance, are obvious scrubs (side note: this contest far and away proved what gamers actually prefer on the whole, but we'll get to that as we discuss Melee's run). Playing to win versus playing for fun is an argument people love to have, but they don't understand that the "playing for fun" side is objectively wrong. They don't win tournaments, they don't win money, and they almost never taken into account when balance patches happen. There's a reason for that. All those people who pick and choose which rallies are "allowed"? Scrubs. The people who whined about Undertale being too new to have contest success? Scrubs. The people who hated Melee's rally against Chrono Trigger, then cheered like mad two rounds later? HUGE collection of scrubs. When I say you're either all or none with rallies, this is where I'm coming from mentally. These contests are meant to be competitive and win prizes. If you make up fake rules to justify something not in the official rules, you are a contest scrub in the same arena as those who don't understand what playing to win actually means. The only way you can have a for-fun contest is if no prizes are offered. Until then, these contests fall under the playing-to-win umbrella. To my point for this particular match. There was no complaining that MGS5 came out and proved it had no contest strength to speak of. There was no outcry that it made the bracket. Nope, just 24 hours of LOL MGS5 when it was only able to get 55% on Perfect Dark. This is a little unfair for a couple reasons, the biggest of which is that it's just disrespectful to Perfect Dark. That game is awesome, and using it to pretend MGS5 is some joke is ridiculous. It's won a contest match before, and might be able to beat Call of Duty 4 now if those two had a rematch. The other is that MGS5 being weak really isn't 5's fault. It's Konami's for being idiotic. We'll discuss that more in round 2, but for now I'm just happy it won a contest match.. Probably the only one I'll ever get to see it win. Ctes's Analysis Back when Metal Gear Solid 4 came out, it boosted the franchise as a whole a ton and MGS4 itself went crazy in the following contest. I don't think anyone expected that much here, but something was to be expected. It was fair to assume that the series would've gotten some kind of boost, even if small and even more fair to assume that the latest entry in the series would have some strength. At this point, we had only seen one of the games in action, but man did that game flop. I know Kingdom Hearts II was the favorite in that match, but that had a lot to do with us expecting it to not have dropped at all and knowing it was a strong entry. We didn't expect the it to be that big a victory though. MGS4 was the first warning that the series has dropped big. Now, Metal Gear Solid V can't really drop, but it can certainly not live up to out expectations. It would never get past A Link to the Past obviously, but it didn't need to be that big to reach round 3. Perfect Dark is not really strong at all, which is shame, because it's a lot better than GoldenEye imo and that game is decently strong. Dark Souls is recent too, and while it's not bad, it should be possible to get past it for a mainline Metal Gear Solid title. That didn't look likely today. Metal Gear Solid V won this match, but it wasn't going into round 2 as the favorite. This was not an impressive performance. Perfect Dark repeats what it did in 2004. Making the game that beat it looking like a lock to lose in round 2. Had this year looked hot for N64 games in particular, MGSV might've looked fine, but that's not the case. Not to mentioned if this was a hot year for N64 games, MGSV could've gotten a real scare here and maybe even lose the match. This is one of the few times a new game beat an old in a close match, but it wasn't expected to be this close. That said, I'm not even sure Metal Gear Solid V disappointing has that much to do with it being recent. It's a well-established franchise and a well received game. Had the series not fallen in general, MGSV would probably be looking a lot better. 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